Tony Rezko, former fundraiser and friend of President Barack Obama and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, was sentenced on Tuesday to ten and a half years in prison for corruption.

Rezko, 56, has already served about 44 months of the 126-month sentence on his 2008 conviction for corruption — including fraud, money laundering and attempting to get $7 million in kickbacks from companies seeking to win deals during Blagojevich’s tenure as governor — the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve said Rezko’s actions during Blagojevich’s term were “selfish and corrupt.” She called his attempts to arrange kickbacks with a board member of the Teachers’ Retirement System particularly reprehensible, telling him in court, “You put their retirements at risk for your own greed and your own thirst for power,” the Sun-Times reported.

Before he was sentenced, Rezko apologized and told the court that “there are no words to describe the pain and regret” he feels and for what he put his family through.

Rezko’s sentencing in Chicago had been delayed after he said he would cooperate with the investigations into Blagojevich and others, and his defense lawyers argued he should be released after serving more than three years, The Associated Press wrote. Prosecutors, however, wanted Rezko locked up for 11 to 15 years.

When Rezko was sentenced, his daughter began sobbing, the Sun-Times reported.

Rezko raised money for Obama when he ran for Illinois senator, but not during his presidential campaign, the AP noted.

Obama also involved Rezko in a house deal after he was elected to the U.S. Senate, a move he later called “a boneheaded mistake,” according to a 2008 report in ABC News.

Obama wanted to purchase a home that the seller had a specific condition on: the adjacent empty lot to the house had to be purchased at the same time, ABC News reported. In the house deal, Rezko’s wife paid the full asking price for that parcel, $625,000.

Obama shelled out $300,000 under the house’s asking price, paying $1.65 million, according to ABC News. Obama then purchased a part of Rezko’s lot for $104,500.

“It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe he had done me a favor,” Obama told the Sun-Times at the time.

Obama said his connection to Rezko was “above board and legal.”

Rezko and others connected to him gave Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign more than $120,000, ABC News reported.